AI Bubble, Stablecoin Boom, and Runnin' Down a Dream | BG2 w/ Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner

**Bill Gurley** (0:00)
I'm applauding the innovation. I'm jumping on board the crypto train, and I hope the incumbents aren't able to strangle this thing in Washington.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:21)
Hey, man, great to see you.

**Bill Gurley** (0:22)
Good to see you, Brad.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:24)
What an incredible weekend of college sports. You know I have to bring this up. I mean, Texas had that big upset of number six, Oklahoma. You had to be pretty stoked about that. It was a good game, it was fun.

**Bill Gurley** (0:35)
People that haven't been to a neutral site game. So like Florida does with Georgia, Texas OU, they meet every year in the middle of the Texas fair. So the stadium's got several hundred thousand people outside of it.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:48)
Oh my God.

**Bill Gurley** (0:49)
And when you get inside, right on the 50s, on both 50s, all one team on the other and all the other fans on the other. So it's loud and it goes back and forth. And it's unlike an experience you get where there's a home team and the crowd's all just rooting for one team.

**Brad Gerstner** (1:05)
Oh, that's cool. Well, my Hoosiers, my Indiana Hoosiers, Bill, upset the number three Ducks. Going to 6-0.

**Bill Gurley** (1:13)
I have a lot of Duck fans in my friend group, so I'm going to refrain from celebrating with you.

**Brad Gerstner** (1:21)
I used to celebrating Hoosier basketball, but rarely Hoosier football. But Kurt Signetti has done an unbelievable job turning that program around. My 90-year-old mother was watching that game and sending me play by play. So congrats to the Hoosiers.

**Bill Gurley** (1:35)
Well, as long as we're calling out college football teams and then we can move on. UCLA starts the season 0-4, then upsets Penn State at home with almost no fans there and wins big again this week. And apparently, there was a coaching change after the 0-4. So this could be the biggest turnaround in the history of college football. Go Bruins.

**Brad Gerstner** (1:57)
Pretty incredible. So there's so much happening in the world today. We're going to unpack a few of those things. We're going to follow up on some of the issues, Bill, that I raised in the Jensen pod. You know, the latest AI announcements, all this bubble talk, circularity of revenues, quality of revenues, AI regulation. But we're also going to do something today and cover something we don't often talk about on the pod, and that's like life and career. Bill, you have a huge book coming out, Running Down a Dream, How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love. I'm so excited for this book. So we're also going to talk a little bit about that today. And in the context of that, you know, we're coming up on the two-year anniversary of this pod. I can't believe it. Time has flown by. But when you and I talked about doing this, we said our mission, really, we want to talk about markets, investing, capitalism, and companies, but really through the eye of the investment analyst. You and I, more than anything else, I think, are analysts. We try to find the biggest problems, opportunities, challenges in the world, study them deeply. We compare notes nonstop.
Occasionally, as an analyst, it leads you to a big investment idea. Sometimes it leads you to a podcast, maybe writing an article, teaching a class, for you writing this book, and sometimes even a major policy initiative, like the Invest America Act that actually became law. I think you would agree with me, the response over the last two years has been amazing, more than either you or I expected. But, you know, that also creates its own pressure of its own to show up, to deliver those unique insights, and this takes a bunch of time.

**Bill Gurley** (3:35)
Yeah.

**Brad Gerstner** (3:35)
So given that, and I don't want to bury the lead here, you have some huge upcoming projects you want to work on, and you're going to step back from the co-hosting the pod. I'll still talk you in on occasion, maybe to be in a guest, but you're freeing up time to work on your big passions, like this book, and going deeper into these topics that people have heard you talk about here, US-China relations, talking about regulatory capture, the dysfunctional state of US healthcare, and for those interested, the pod's mission remains the same. I'm gonna keep the same name. We're gonna keep chopping it up with analysts I respect, sometimes with Bill, and covering topics that matter, you know, like last week's pod with Jensen Huang, or upcoming pods I have with Sam Altman or Sacha. This is a moment of, I think, really unique consequence. We both recognize that. We're grateful to have the opportunity to open source these conversations that are truly shaping the future. And I know I speak for you. We do it for the love of the game. Like this keeps us sharp. It keeps us on edge. You know, and it's a privilege really to get on here and chop it up and share something back with the tech ecosystem that gives us, you know, has given us so much. So Bill, you know, you have anything you want to say?